Dragon Nimbus Novels: Vol II, The

by Irene Radford

  “I’ve never heard of a magician hiding his talent before,” Nimbulan said around a very dry throat.

  “Then learn to do it in a hurry.” Scarface grabbed Nimbulan’s wrist on the table. “I’ll take you into a trance and show you where to look.”

  Nimbulan didn’t have time to ask why these men were cutthroat mercenaries in Hanassa when they might be employed as honest magicians elsewhere. The void opened before his eyes as Scarface breathed deeply in the first stages of trance. Nimbulan followed him, sensing the urgency. Rollett moved closer, placing his hand on top of Scarface’s. Nimbulan wasn’t certain if his companion joined the trance or merely monitored it.

  Three deep breaths brought him into rapport with Aaddler, Scarface. The void revealed true names, ideals, and faults. Nimbulan scanned his companion carefully, seeking a source of trust. Before he could examine more than the constant pain behind his eyes from the old wound, Aaddler said, “Nimbulan, I know you from old. We faced each other as Battlemages. I know you to be honest and true to your oaths. Trust me. Look into your heart’s aura. Look for the beacon.”

  Nimbulan had never heard of an individual organ having an aura, he’d always looked at the layers of energy that enveloped the entire body. Those layers had to begin somewhere.

  Another’s colors were always easier to see than one’s own. He searched Aaddler in the region of his heart. Sure enough, a tiny flare of dark green light pulsed there. Dark green suited Aaddler—suppressed fire hiding behind logic and reason. He remembered him now. They had fought to a standstill fifteen years ago. Both patrons had withdrawn from the battle. Aaddler had saluted Nimbulan in respect for his talent and retreated honorably.

  Find your own beacon. This is the core of your magic. The beginning and the end. Find it quickly.

  Do it! Rollett added. I sense Moncriith is very close. His thoughts revolve around destroying every magician he encounters.

  Nimbulan looked deep within himself. He knew his signature color was blue, had identified it long ago when still an apprentice. The layers of his own energy flared and blinded him.

  Follow the life-cord backward! If a mental voice could hiss, Aaddler hissed. I can’t afford to be caught with you, Nimbulan. Your guilt will become my guilt. You are the magician Yaassima seeks to eliminate. You are the husband of her heir and the only person who can take the heir and her baby away.

  The news of a baby slid into his awareness. Did Yaassima have control of Maia’s baby as well as Myrilandel?

  With a deep breath, Nimbulan found the blue-and-silver umbilical that trailed from his corporeal body into the void. Wrapped tightly around it was a crystal-and-pale-lavender umbilical. Myrilandel! He’d found her at last. If he followed her umbilical, he’d be beside her in an instant. But only in his mind. Living bodies couldn’t traverse the void.

  He traced the umbilical back into his own body. Each layer of energy was thicker, more resilient. He pushed harder until he faced a blazing blue light like a thousand sapphires sparkling in sunlight.

  There. Now grasp the beacon and place it atop the physical table.

  Nimbulan followed instructions. The pulsing blue energy didn’t want to leave his body. His magical talent had defined his life for so long it had become entwined with his very soul.

  Yank it out. Now. We haven’t time to waste. The Bloodmage enters this abode, Rollett ordered as his own blue-and-red beacon slid into the wood grain of the table’s surface.

  Reluctantly, Nimbulan thrust the beacon out of his body. Once free of his personal energy, the light dimmed. He needed all of his willpower to keep himself from rejoining with his talent. His body was but an empty shell without it.

  Drop the damn thing onto the table. Aaddler nearly deafened Nimbulan’s mental hearing.

  He obeyed. His talent spread out into a gentle puddle with clearly defined edges. His talent filled a space shaped like a hand, fingers slightly curved—the gesture he used to gather magic. Aaddler’s puddle took on the shape of an open mouth, tongue tasting the air. Rollett’s looked like two eyes connected by a furrowed brow.

  Let your talent merge with the wood. The Bloodmage can’t find it embedded in an inanimate object. Good. Now lighten your trance so that you are aware of your body and the room around you. You will have to react to Moncriith as if he is no threat. Aaddler withdrew slightly from the rapport he and Nimbulan shared.

  “Don’t take your hands off the table.” Scarface nudged Nimbulan’s knee with his boot beneath the wooden surface. “You have to stay in contact with your talent, or you’ll lose it forever.”

  Chapter 23

  Nimbulan kept his eyes glued to his wine cup. He waited for the hair on the back of his neck to bristle as a warning that Moncriith approached. His body remained inert. The faint sensory tingles on his skin that told him much of what happened around him evaporated with the removal of his talent.

  Colors faded before his eyes. A general numbness began to creep through his body. He bit his lip to control his panic.

  He pressed his hand harder against the table where his talent lay. The wooden surface contained six other puddles. None of the five mercenaries, nor Rollett, seemed overly concerned with the separation from their talents.

  Nimbulan’s knuckles turned white where he gripped the table.

  “He’ll leave soon enough.” Scarface grinned in sympathy. “He’s single-minded enough to ignore anyone without an obvious talent.”

  “He could get us into the palace, Nimbulan. He has the Kaalipha’s ear,” Rollett whispered.

  “I won’t risk becoming his ally,” Nimbulan replied. “He’s too dangerous.”

  Nimbulan heard footsteps behind him. Heavily booted feet. He couldn’t detect any other clues to the man’s identity and nearly panicked. He needed his talent to survive.

  Moncriith would sense the talent and condemn him on the spot.

  “Stand up, soldier,” Moncriith ordered. He pressed a knee into Nimbulan’s back as a prod.

  Nimbulan resisted the urge to turn and look at the man, see how he had changed in the last year. He wanted to demand how the man dared survive the last battle in Coronnan when Ackerly, Nimbulan’s assistant and oldest friend, had died. Instead, he said defiantly, “You ain’t my officer.”

  Scarface nodded ever so slightly in acknowledgment of the tactic.

  “Yaassima, Kaalipha of Hanassa, gave me the authority to sponsor my own troop of mercenaries. Lorriin, King of SeLenicca, marches into Coronnan as soon as I have gathered my forces. I can gather soldiers any way I choose to. I choose all of you present.”

  “You’ll have to debate that with our captain,” Scarface said. “We have signed blood oaths to follow him to the death.”

  Nimbulan gulped back a protest. He couldn’t sign an oath like that. He had no intention of staying with these men any longer than he had to. As soon as he found Myri, he would leave and never return.

  “Your captain fell to my blade less than an hour ago,” Moncriith boasted.

  All heads turned to stare at a man’s severed right hand. Two rings glinted on the lifeless fingers. Blood dripped from the stump onto the floor. Even if the owner of the hand lived, he’d never wield a sword again.

  Moncriith held his bloody trophy up in his left hand while he twirled a long knife in his right. Traces of blood lingered on the blade.

  “I’m surprised he didn’t bring the man’s head,” Scarface muttered bitterly.

  “The head would involve an instant kill. No more pain. As long as he has the hand and the victim lives, he can fuel his magic with the pain,” Nimbulan replied. Outrage at Moncriith’s casual dismissal of life boiled up from his gut.

  Briefly, Nimbulan noted the new scars that creased the Bloodmage’s face and arms. He hadn’t given up his vile magic that required blood and pain for fuel. If he was recruiting mercenaries, his war would be a crusade. With the new invasion of Coronnan by SeLenicca, Moncriith could carry his demon hunt right back to the dragons that now protected King
Quinnault and the Commune of Magicians—presuming they would return now that he actively searched for Myri.

  What had he said? King Lorriin marched when Moncriith was ready! Who organized this campaign, the king or the Bloodmage?

  Stargods! He had to get back to the capital soon, with his wife, Kalen, and Powwell. He didn’t know either of Myri’s adopted children well, but he’d not leave behind anyone she loved.

  “By your oaths in blood you must now follow me, the man who defeated your captain in single combat.” Moncriith kicked the stool out from under the teenager to Nimbulan’s right. The boy lurched sideways, keeping one hand on the tabletop.

  Nimbulan bit his lip to keep from crying out. The boy’s fingers had slipped away from the puddle of his talent. He darted a look to Scarface to see if this condemned the boy to a mundane life or not.

  Scarface replied with a tiny shake of the head, then lifted his chin ever so slightly toward the teenager’s puddle. It had spread within the grain of wood to reach his fingertips.

  Nimbulan relaxed a little. As long as he touched some portion of the table, his talent was safe.

  “By my vision from the Stargods and the authority of the Kaalipha, I claim your loyalty. I have the power to make you obey me.” Moncriith touched the partially coagulated blood on the hand and chanted a string of unrecognizable words.

  Even without his magic, Nimbulan recognized the spell the Bloodmage wove—a compulsion to follow him blindly.

  “We have to get out of here, fast,” he whispered to Scarface.

  “Not without my talent. If I grab it and run past the Bloodmage, he’ll know me for what I am.”

  “Is there another way out of here?”

  “Not unless you want to dig a hole through solid rock into the volcano.”

  “If we let him capture us, we’ll get into the palace. We can turn on him once we’re inside,” Rollett reminded them.

  Moncriith increased the volume of his chant. All around them, men’s faces took on glazed looks. Already the need to obey pushed at Nimbulan. He willed it aside.

  “On my count of five, grab your talent and run for the door, don’t try to attack the Bloodmage, and don’t look back,” Nimbulan murmured to the men closest to him. “Whatever you do, don’t touch Moncriith or that bloody artifact. If you do, you will be marked by magic, and he’ll be able to follow and command you anywhere.”

  Five men nodded. Nimbulan kept his eyes on Moncriith, waiting for the crucial moment between partial awareness while he set up the spell and a full trance when he had total command of everyone within reach of his aura.

  “One . . . two . . . three, four, five!” Nimbulan closed his eyes, wrapped both hands around the tiny sapphire beacon on the table and dashed for the door.

  Moncriith ended his chant and spread his arms to gather the auras of all the men in the room.

  Nimbulan ducked and rolled past the Bloodmage. Moncriith’s hand brushed his shoulder. He opened his eyes wide, fully aware.

  “Nimbulan! There. Grab the foreign magician. Yaassima will reward us greatly for his head!” Moncriith shouted.

  Rollett stumbled into Moncriith, knocking the heavier man off balance. He fell against the table Nimbulan and the others had just vacated. The bloody hand flew out of Moncriith’s grasp and landed flat against Rollett’s chest.

  The young man’s eyes glazed over. His mouth gaped slightly. He turned and faced Moncriith, obedient and docile.

  In unison with the men in the wineshop, Rollett unsheathed his sword and marched after Nimbulan.

  Sweat broke out on Televarn’s brow and under his arms. His legs twitched restlessly beneath his sleeping furs. He flung out his arms seeking his bedmate. His mate. His bride.

  Myrilandel.

  He clutched only cold air within the Rover cavern in Hanassa. Thirty-three days she had been his in that secluded cove on the Great Bay. His, body and soul. Over a year had passed since he had possessed her unconditional love.

  Over a year since she had deserted him. Myrilandel, the only woman who had ever left him. He couldn’t rest until he bedded her again and wiped the memory of Nimbulan from her mind.

  Enough! He thrust his sleeping furs into the corner. He’d not wait another day to wrest control of Hanassa from Yaassima’s hands. By the time the sun set again, he would claim Myrilandel as his wife, and together they would dip their hands in the Kaalipha’s blood.

  “Get up.” He kicked his uncle in the small of the older man’s back. “Marshal all of our people and give them weapons. We storm the palace from within and without at dawn.”

  “Where are you going?” Uncle Vaanyim groaned and pressed his hands where Televarn had kicked him. Then he sat up and rubbed his eyes sleepily.

  “To claim some favors a scar-faced mercenary owes me.”

  “What about the slaves, do we arm them, too?”

  “Why not? We need numbers of people to overwhelm the guards before they can slap their wands and freeze us all.”

  “The slaves may turn on us and try to escape.”

  “So what? They will cause more chaos at the gates. Arm everyone you can find. If you run out of weapons here, you know where we have stored the extras in the pit.” Another advantage of the dragongate. Over the past two years, he’d brought in large numbers of swords, spears, and clubs from outside and hidden them in the rabbit warren of tunnels that led beneath the palace to the pit. The means of the Kaalipha’s destruction had never passed her guards with their detection wands.

  He reminded himself to force the secret of those wands from Yaassima before he lopped off her head with her own execution weapon.

  “Televarn, tell Scarface to bring all of his magician companions.” Uncle Vaanyim rolled stiffly to his knees. “We’ll need them to neutralize the wands at the palace gate.”

  What to do with the loose talent in his hands? Nimbulan wondered as he ran from the filthy wineshop.

  His table companions ran past him, also holding their magical abilities in their hands. They all needed a moment of quiet privacy to reabsorb the talents.

  Rollett. What had the boy done with his talent? Nimbulan needed his magic to break Moncriith’s spell upon the journeyman magician. But his talent made him an easily recognizable target.

  The sound of marching feet behind him spurred Nimbulan to run faster in his companions’ wake. He stumbled over an imperfection in the ground. His knee twisted under him with an audible crack. He resisted the urge to brace his fall with his hands. His face met the Kardia. A sharp rock stabbed his chest. Fire ran up his leg from the wrenched ligaments in his knee.

  “Spread out, men. Bring me that magician alive!” Moncriith ordered.

  The Kardia reverberated beneath Nimbulan’s body from the force of the men marching in unison. Probably thinking in unison, too. Televarn’s spells did that to his followers as well.

  Nimbulan turned over, still cupping his hands around his talent. He needed a place to hide it and himself. An inanimate object he could hold.

  His staff! Where in Simurgh’s hells was the thing?

  As he thought about his valuable tool, a long stick rolled toward him, resting against his hands where he held his talent. The staff had found the magic talent that had molded the grain and shaped the knobs and bends in the once straight tree branch.

  Quickly Nimbulan thrust the tiny blue beacon into the staff, a nearly inanimate object that Moncriith should not sense.

  He still had to break the Bloodmage’s hold upon Rollett. Perhaps there was a mundane method. What? Villagers used them all the time to break curses, real and imaginary. He’d never paid enough attention to the lives of people outside the army and the training of Battlemages. Myri would know.

  The footsteps came closer. Nimbulan tucked his miserable knee beneath him. He bit his lip until he tasted blood to keep from crying out in pain. Awkwardly he scrunched into the nearest shadow. His staff seemed to melt into the darkness with him.

  A blazing light illuminated the stret
ch of path he’d just measured his length against. He stared at the bloody hand that held aloft the witchlight. Moncriith. The Bloodmage had slashed his own palm to fuel the light.

  Nimbulan ducked his face deep within his folded arms to keep the light from reflecting off his pale skin. Through his closed eyelids, he sensed more light. Had Rollett added his own abilities to Moncriith’s?

  Stargods, he wished his talent was intact. But Moncriith would seek it out. Slay him on the spot and collect a huge reward for the deed.

  More light crept through his closed eyes. Moncriith must be flooding the area with balls of witchlight. The glow dimmed as the Bloodmage’s spell faded.

  He heard a cry, and the light blazed once more. Nimbulan winced in sympathy with whichever man suffered the slash of Moncriith’s wickedly sharp knife for the sake of a little more magic light. He had to rescue Rollett before he became a victim.

  If ever Moncriith’s compulsion on these hardened mercenaries fell apart, they’d turn on him. Nimbulan didn’t have time to wait for that, nor the privacy and peace to set a counterspell to Moncriith’s terrible compulsions.

  The footsteps moved on, more slowly as the men searched for Nimbulan with mundane senses. Or were they searching at all? Maybe only Moncriith looked. The mercenaries could be just following him. In which case, the Bloodmage would use his magic to seek Nimbulan’s magic. That brief touch in the wineshop had given Moncriith a glimpse of Nimbulan’s magical signature, all he’d need under normal circumstances.

  But Nimbulan’s magic was now embedded in the staff, not his body.

  Slowly he stood up, using the staff to brace his painful knee.

  “I’m getting too old for this kind of adventure,” he muttered as his back resisted straightening and his shoulder revealed another wrenching injury.

  He limped in the direction Scarface had taken. He needed help finding Myri and getting out of here. The magician mercenaries seemed his only chance.

  “There, grab that man! He was with the magician we seek,” Moncriith commanded ahead of Nimbulan and to the left.